Robert M. Christie Views the Future as if Facts Matter.

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Monthly Archives: September 2018

Rape is a violent crime of domination. Violence, of course, is the ultimate act of domination. We tend to see violence as an act of physical force leading to either physical injury or death, and it often is. But violence can also take on more subtle forms.

Not all domination directly entails physical force. Some forms of dominance involve mental violence. Spousal abuse, as well as sexual harassment, can take social psychological forms involving no physical act. Some forms of abuse consist mainly of “degradation rituals.” Trump is a master of ritual degradation.

Domination often comes under the “color of authority,” whether physically violent or not. When abusers lead large organizations, the result is often institutionalized degradation of whole populations or vulnerable communities. Elites often subject whole classes of victims to exploitation for profit. So-called “authorities” too often exhibit sociopathic tendencies in their “enforcement” of rules, regulations, or laws.

Sociopathy Empowered

Rapists, like all sociopaths, seek to exercise power by any means necessary to control and exploit their victims. Many power-seekers use their aggression to gain social, economic, or political power. It is not surprising, therefore, that a greater percentage of people in positions of authority are sociopaths than in the general population. Bullies typically begin their abuse at an early age.

Whether he is drunk or not, a seventeen-year-old who attempts to rape a fifteen-year-old exhibits sociopathic behavior; he is a rapist. We should not dismiss such bullying as a mere youthful indiscretion. Instead, attempted rape reflects a deep personality disorder that is not likely to change in adulthood.

However, many sociopaths disguise their lack of empathy within aggressive acts once they become executives, jurists, or politicians who have great power over others. Sophisticated bullies often disguise their ruthless exercise of power as the mere execution of legal principals. We can find bullies in all economic classes, of course. But those who rise within economic and political elites pose a far greater danger to society than any street hustler.

Most experts on sociopathy/psychopathy agree that it is not a curable condition. While sociopaths learn to appear to conform to social norms of civility and even kindness, they actually have little or no empathy for others. Some more severe cases engage in ruthless Trumperyand, while they demand absolute loyalty from their associates, they do not hesitate to “throw them under the bus” if that is convenient. We have too many examples of that emanating from the highest political office in the land.

Many sociopaths adapt to their social surroundings by deploying a practiced charm. As a result, they become quite successful, especially if they went to elite prep schools and universities. In such higher social strata, they develop connections with the sons and daughters of other well-connected families, which they use throughout their careers.

The Career Rapist

It is not unusual for men from wealthy families, who have a need to dominate others, to occupy high offices. Such men often cling to a set of political beliefs that reflect their obsessive desire to dominate, disparage, and dismiss the rights of vulnerable minority peoples. They often advocate for laws that oppress minorities (and women) even further. Too often, they have successful careers.

Sociopaths just do not feel whole if they fail to dominate others from groups they see as weaker and therefore undeserving of respect or rights. That is why fascists are also racists and racists have authoritarian personalities so similar to those of fascists. Nor is it particularly surprising that sociopaths, who usually also display elements of narcissism, express their need to dominate by one form of sexual predation or another. Executive power affords so many opportunities for sexual harassment in male-dominated organizations.

Rape of Democracy

Many abusers avoid public exposure for decades. A few, when subject to close scrutiny, such as in a vetting process when nominated for high office, say, Supreme Court justice may be finally exposed. That sends an already corrupt “advise and consent” process into a tailspin with politicians running in all directions for cover.

The accuser is doubly victimized when political allies of the “closet predator” dismiss the claims of a female victim, by using various forms of sexist derision and patronizing innuendo, all while feigning the concern for “giving her a fair hearing.” Anita Hill was the classic victim of such sociopathic politics.

Entrenched politicians see it all as “just politics.” Since many politicians have sociopathic tendencies themselves, those who are allies of the perpetrator rally to his defense using every available discounting and delegitimizing technique they can muster.

In the political realm, when all this happens, another unacknowledged victim of rape is Democracy herself.

Many consider China to be the leader in responding to global warming because of its shift in energy production from coal to solar. It sells more solar panels in the U.S. than American companies do. It appears to be seriously responding to the devastating smog levels in Beijing and taking other measures to curtail carbon emissions from the fastest growing giant economy in the world. Nevertheless, China continues its relentless project of industrialization.

As a result, a new class of middle class, wealthy executives, and a super-rich entrepreneurial class has emerged in China, not unlike those in the U.S. China is clearly on a path to becoming a major world economic power. Economic dominance usually leads to the growth of military institutions. If the history of European colonialism and that of U.S. imperialism are any measure, the next step is military aggression to secure newly won economic dominance. It would seem that China is well on the way to emulating imperial strategies of the recent past.

Economic Imperialism Then and Now

Amanda Erikson has reported in the Washington Post a striking example of growing Chinese economic expansion in Asia. A Chinese real estate development company is developing “Forest City,” a huge complex of “residential skyscrapers, malls, parks, and a Jack Nicklaus designed golf course.” The aging Mahathir Mohamad, leader of the current Malaysian government, has vowed to review the project, fearing excessive Chinese influence in his nation as well as potential huge debt. Sound familiar?

A Model of “Forest City,” Malaysia

The U.S. has engaged in some extremely aggressive clandestine strategies to achieve economic dominance of not-so-industrialized nations, reducing them to political dependents. Do you remember John Perkins’ 2004 book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man? It was a personal memoir of his career as an economic hit man for the U.S. government and corporate interests. His goal was to rope leaders of nations such as Philippines, Columbia, etc., into huge development projects that provided U.S. corporations with great profits while indebting the “client nation” to the U.S. That strategy enabled the U.S. to subordinate those governments through debt and virtually dictate their foreign policy. If the subject nation’s leader refused such deals, he was likely to die in a mysterious plane crash or other “mishap” at the hands of men Perkins described as the “Jackals.”

Economic Injustice Causes Climate Chaos

Well, I know of no Chinese “Jackals,” but the rest of the Chinese economic expansionism seems much the same as twentieth-century U.S. imperial strategy. What is most disturbing to me in all this is that the Chinese, like every other industrial nation today, is behaving as if there were no climate crisis, as if there were no threat to the entire Earth system on which we all depend for sustenance and survival.

Whatever the specifics of the relations between nation-states and corporate economic expansionism – such as the U.S. corporate state or the Chinese state-capitalism, or any other variant of institutionalized compulsive economic growth – the outcome is the same. Greater concentration of wealth and more investment in capital-intensive economic development projects serve the interests of the wealthy and exploit the labor of the poor and working populations. In the process, they accelerate climate chaos and ecological devastation.

Growing practices and policies of economic injustice by cooperating corporate and government institutions directly causes the growing destruction of local and regional living Earth systems. That, in turn, subjects the entire Earth system to further destabilization as it enters the new geologic era, the Anthropocene. Worldwide, the most powerful institutions, both public and private, equivocate, deny, and sustain utopian illusions of never-ending economic growth and political power. This cannot end well.

One of the many drawbacks of living in the intermediatedworld of industrial consumerism is that we have pretty much abandoned aesthetics. Form and function are mostly industrial products too. Marketing psychology drives them, like almost everything else.

Diverse commercial and political interests present a pre-formed world to us on the flat digital screens of our many “devices,” from smartphones to laptops. Most of the time some “middleman,” either an institution or a technology, mediates between the person and her/his perception of the world and action toward it. The various institutional purveyors of images and text mediate (shape and frame) these forms to fit their needs by selling us some product or promoting some idea, project, or political strategy.

Alienated Beauty

“Beauty” is presented to “the eye of the beholder” pre-defined by an intermediary, or it may be lost entirely in the forms of intermediated function. We see little that is directly in front of us in its natural form. More and more control is no longer direct. Beauty is subordinated to control.

I have recently become much more aware of the importance of the fact that we live in an intermediated world. The sense that so-called “self-driving” cars fit in some inevitable path of progress is an iconic cultural indicator of the dominance of intermediation and the subordination of aesthetics to system control. The implications are many and in some cases profound, sometimes even deadly. Here is one example.

Increasingly Intermediated Aviation

In aviation, pilots now benefit from a plethora of real-time digital information and images on “Primary Flight Displays” (flat-panel screens) in the cockpit, including navigational data and even moving maps with three-dimensional terrain depiction. Pilots enter flight plans into a GPS (Global Positioning System), which links them to map data and current weather data regularly updated and depicted on a screen during the flight. The screen displays the current position and actual track of the aircraft over land including any deviation from the flight plan, in real time. These displays do have a certain aesthetic appeal.

The GPS transmits both flight-plan and current position data to the autopilot, which signals servos that control ailerons, rudder, and elevators, thereby directing the aircraft along the designated route. The pilot is reduced to a technician who programs the automated systems that actually fly the aircraft on a flight path determined mostly by the airline and the FAA.

That is the epitome of intermediation. The airline pilot is left with little to do but manage and monitor the system that flies the airplane. He does make judgments and may request from Air Traffic Control a deviation in altitude or direction to avoid thunderstorms or turbulence. Both the system-generated situational data and the flight systems intermediate between data, the actor, and the action.

Such complex systems diminish human control and the beauty of flying. No wonder so many airline pilots own old-fashioned biplanes or small experimental aircraft they fly when off duty. They miss the direct experience of flying lost in their professional work. Flying a Stearman PT-17/N2S Biplane is a Direct Experience

The complexity and power of intricate automated systems really are quite amazing. However, the separation of human action from direct experience has its downside. In the case of flying, airline pilots who often have the latest complex automated systems in their airliners can get “rusty” in the hands-on skills of directly flying the aircraft.

The problem arises when some system falters, whether due to mechanical or electronic failure or due to extreme weather. Over-reliance on automated systems in some instances has caused pilots to misread direct signs of an emergency, causing fatal crashes. Similar downsides occur in countless other areas of modern life.

Aesthetics is Experience

What about aesthetics in all this? Well, it is all about direct perception. The image is not the thing itself. The map is not the land. Maps, of course, provide guides to navigating the land, but the distinction is important. We can appreciate the beauty of the product of a fine cartographer.

We can even build some beauty into maps generated by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) using “big data.” We can even revel in the beauty and technical prowess of an automotive moving map display depicting our travel on unfamiliar roads as it leads us on the quickest route to our destination in unknown territory.

I have not nearly as much fun with the GPS in my pickup truck as I do with the one in my little airplane. In aircraft, most GPS units are far more complex, powerful, and expensive than those assisting automotive navigation. But the primary aesthetic experience, to the extent that there is one, is in the actual travel itself. Driving through a redwood forest in Northern California or flying over Monument Valley in Utah provides a direct experience of natural beauty. So does flying among puffy white clouds after a storm. Most pilots fly because they love the aesthetic experience.

However, our overreliance on technologies and institutions that mediate the relations between us and our world can cause us to crash, either literally or figuratively. We do have a tendency to see the map as the terrain itself. It is, after all, a substitute for looking out the window.

Too many people too often rely on biased interpretations of life presented to them by powerful institutions through technologies of so-called smart devices. They uncritically accept the intermediation of their life experiences through imagery specifically designed to manipulate their behavior, either for marketing or for political purposes. Perception and aesthetic interpretation increasingly alienate us from direct experience of life itself.

Losing Aesthetic Experience

Navigational equipment is just one of many examples of the intermediation of human action by powerful technology. Many other examples reflect similar conditions and outcomes, at least as many driven by institutional dynamics as by technology itself. In most cases, the technology or institution provides some useful function while diminishing our control.

So, don’t get me wrong; I’m not giving up my GPS. Some complex actions are not possible without intermediation. Yet, intermediation is a game changer in the evolution of human action and in the ability of humanity to mitigate or adapt to the planetary changes that the growth of intermediation has caused. We live in a system of our own making that largely controls us and is fast destroying the world on which we depend.

The same processes increasingly occur within complex institutions, whether corporations to government agencies. In more and more areas of human interaction, goals and actions are increasingly intermediated by complex procedures, paperwork, “red tape,” technical requirements, and bureaucratic obstacles, than ever before. The resulting loss of human control over action and events suppresses aesthetics as it destroys the world on which it depends.

Can we do it ourselves? If we recycle everything and take shorter showers, install some solar panels, buy low-emissions products, etc., etc., can we avoid climate catastrophe? Sorry. Absolutely not.

The problem runs much deeper than that – it involves the entire Earth System. The climate crisis is endemic to industrial civilization itself. That means, in some sense, everything must change. But how can change adequate to this global crisis be accomplished? That is the big unacknowledged question. I have heard many emissions reduction targets (you know, 20% reduction by 2030, etc. – they mean nothing).

Words and Inaction

Such proclamations are abstract; they say nothing about how such minimal gestures toward necessity would be accomplished. Yet we are awash in data on every kind of emission from every kind of economic activity and every form of ecological and climate disturbance. Emissions reductions proclamations and agreements are nothing more than fantasy.

Species extinctions are accelerating with increasing more intense Droughts and other forms of Climate Chaos

Hundreds of species go extinct every day now. The sixth great mass extinction is well underway. New car sales are booming, yet in the past five years, the share of electric vehicles has never exceeded 1%. So many ecological fronts on which destabilization is accelerating make it nearly impossible to keep up, no less mount the planetary-scale changes required of us to make an actual difference.

Euphemisms avoid confronting difficult decisions. The good news is that new capacity in renewable energy production is growing faster than new fossil-fuel capacity, despite Trumpist coal hawking. But to have a chance at slowing weather weirding and global climate chaos, we need to stop all new fossil-fueled energy production — a mind-boggling prospect. Yet, we actually need to use lessenergy by taking serious, even drastic conservation measures.

Individual Action

One of the most important factors for those of us who already take climate-disruption danger seriously is that we not fall into the complacency of doing something personal and feeling that we have done our part and that is that. Individual action by those who are aware and care will never be enough. Your withdrawal from profligate consumerism, or even going off the grid, while admirable and necessary, remains a typically American form of ethical individualism It may oppose the collective anti-moralism of collective consumerism. However, it will not solve our collective problem of the headlong rush of the industrial leviathan, the technosphere that continues its spread of carbon into the atmosphere. Only mass mobilization for major energy-use reduction has a chance of being enough.

Consumer Identity

The current momentum of the economic growth machine alone – even if we assume some moderate level of individual withdrawal from the consumerist culture – will be enough to take the climate well past the tipping point of no return to climate stability. The change we need is deeply systemic, and that will not happen until a social movement much broader than the Bernie Sanders’ “Our Revolution” can mobilize people on a vast scale.

Collective Action

Only mass mobilization can overcome the force the economic as well as political momentum, and allow us to transform the extractive industrial economy into an ecological society. This is where transforming the consumer culture becomes paramount. The more we can demonstrate low-carbon consumer minimalism and vastly reduce energy consumption while restoring local ecosystems, the faster social change can help re-stabilize climate and avert total disaster.

We need to replace all carbon-based consumer products and services with consumer minimalism, now. That will involve some constraints we are not used to, but there is no time to waste. I discussed this in more detail at TheHopefulRealist.com, especially in my Feb 24, 2016 post. We must all do what we can do and join any effort we can in our local communities to make the changes that will help turn the larger system away from its path to extinction.

“I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” ~ Anonymous

When does authority end? Well, authority ends when people believe that it no longer exists. That is because authority is not a thing one possesses; authority is a relationship in which the members of a system acknowledge the holder of power as legitimate. Power can be held without authority but is inherently weaker and unstable when illegitimate. Power without legitimacy can be exercised only by force.

For example, in a formally democratic constitutional political system, such as that in the U.S.A., the very election of a president is the agreed upon process for installing a president in office. It is the only legitimate means by which the man (or someday woman) can assume the office. The inauguration is the ritual that legitimizes the turning over of the executive authority of incumbency to the person who won the election.

Chaos Central

Of course, we have experienced growing concerns over the legitimacy of the electoral process itself, but most people view the process as legitimate even though flawed. Yet, the flaws seem to have grown significantly in recent years, with the more extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression. Still, most people accept the results, if grudgingly.

Once in office, a president has a wide range of options as to his behavior in executing the duties of the office. The three-branch system of government allows a lot of interpretation in the administration of laws. Administrative policies may even twist the meaning in how a president implements a law, with little consequence beyond complaints.

In the present instance, the president appointed the “principal officers of the executive departments” (Section 4, Amendment XXV, U.S. Constitution) that is, the members of his cabinet, with the sole purpose of having those officers dismantle the administration of existing laws that do not favor the corporations and the rich.

Naturally, many people have challenged the legitimacy of such actions. Many current lawsuits challenge the actions of Trump’s cabinet members on the basis that they have violated rather than administered the laws passed by Congress. That is because such actions are the equivalent of re-writing or nullifying such laws, which, of course, is the sole prerogative of the Congress.

When a president routinely takes such illegitimate actions, the government may experience a constitutional crisis. That is because presidential actions meant to avoid or roll back the implementation of laws passed by Congress violate the constitutional principle of separation of powers. As we all know, such practices have become extremely commonplace in the presidential administration of Donald J. Trump.

Our current president evidently views the office he holds as equivalent to that of a CEO of a private family business, a patriarch, or a mob boss. But, of course, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, too many citizens also have little knowledge or respect for these constitutional principles.

Decay of Authority

This president has taken so many illegitimate actions that I will not list them here. Putting aside the perverse peculiarities of personality, a strong sense has grown that the man is incapable of exercising the powers of the office without putting the nation in great danger, especially in international relations, domestic security, and in denying climate science.

Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear: Trump in the White House,” (already widely quoted before reaching the bookstores) has already caused great consternation by revealing numerous instances that indicate several grounds for considering the president to be unfit for office. Of course, Trump proclaimed it a work of fiction, despite Woodward’s long-standing solid reputation for basing his books on strong evidence and multiple reliable sources.

Far more damning, however, is the anonymously authored op-ed piece in the New York Times, titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” Written by one or more high-level members of the administration, the author(s) claim that “I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.’ It describes a White House in full disarray as members of the administration try to cover, block, or undo many “dangerous impulses” and erratic actions of a man who is out of control in too many ways to enumerate. We can safely assume that The Times would not have taken such an unprecedented step without fully vetting the source.

Whatever one’s political viewpoint, the question of whether the man is unfit, recklessly dangerous, just too mentally unstable, or otherwise “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” (Amendment XXV, Section 4, U.S. Constitution) then some means of removing him from power is necessary. When the inner circle of the White House finds it necessary to remove papers from his desk, diffuse his attempts to lash out at the world in various ways, or when a top general just does not follow orders given on a dangerous whim, a genuine constitutional crisis is already in play.

So far, the Republican right in Congress has gotten its legislative way because the president consistently and with mean spirit unwinds many laws an regulations meant to protect citizens and environments while affording the super-rich and giant corporations obscene tax cuts. But at some point, the present trend of increasing chaos will force their hand.

The End of the Line

Whether before or after the mid-term elections, the outrage of ordinary Republicans, independents and Democrats alike will force the hand of self-absorbed politicians in Congress. They will by then see the end of their free ride on the horizon as voters protest their continued inaction. The talk of annulling Trump’s election is building as Mueller indicts more of Trump’s associates. “Anonymous” even mentions invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove him from office. Impeachment would be the weaker approach since it would replace him with Pence, the corrupt henchman elected along with him, and leave cabinet members and all the insane executive orders and dangerous actions in place.

Annulment of the election would be the more difficult path, but the best way to reverse much of the damage already done. The growing evidence of illegal tampering with the election, not only by the Russians but by Republican campaign officials, cries out for annulment. After all, the authority of this president has ended.

Now it is time to rise to the occasion of this unprecedented constitutional crisis and clean up the president’s mess. Many politicians will have to break out of their established habits and act like statesmen. Taking the right path will not be easy, but it may save the republic.

The GOP Pimps are playing Trollop Trump, like no other patsy in history. In that sense, you could say that they are colluding with the Russians. They still despise him but hide it since he has become their cash cow. But Trump is a double patsy, after all. The Russians have played him ever since his disastrous casino failures of the 1970s left him on the brink of bankruptcy when no legitimate bank would touch his toxic financial mess. That left the Kremlin-linked Russian Mafia and their front banks a great opportunity to “rescue” and indebt him to them simultaneously. David Kay Johnson has documented Trump’s brash blunders and blatant corruption for decades including his more recent escapades in The Making of Donald Trump (2016). Johnson describes his ‘presidential’ destruction of American Democracy in It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America (2018).

A Hustler’s Trail

Now, Craig Unger compiles diverse historical sources documenting Trump’s corrupt history with his own current research on Trump’s subservience to Putin in his new book, House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia (2018). U.S. Trumpists, who have fallen for his demagoguery and seem more like reality-show fans than political actors, dismiss the overwhelming historical record of corruption as mere liberal bias as they revel in the brash violation of political norms by the Fake Outsider.

Trollop Trump and his Republican pimps and enablers have one thing in common and it is not patriotism, it is plunder. They are collecting the booty from his prostitution of the presidency. It is true that Trump was a political outsider. Multiple independent sources confirm that he was (and is) despised by the financial and real-estate elites of New York, who find his narcissistic mob-boss pretensions to status among its elite distasteful. But that does not diminish his impulse to act in the interests of the American plutocracy (to which he so fervently aspires) against the American people.

Both Trollop Trump and the Republican Party elite, as well as his Russian Mafia handlers, brazenly engage in high-stakes Trumpery. (“Trumpery,” if you had not heard, derives from the Middle English “trumpery” and ultimately from the Middle French “tromper,” meaning “to deceive.” See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trumpery.)

Trump is a patsy for the Russians. We do not know all the details yet, but his behavior is a clear giveaway. Helsinki is but the most obvious of a consistent pattern of defensive subservience to Putin and his regime. Just because the Hillary Democrats are obsessed with blaming the Russians for her failure, does not make the Russians any less guilty of manipulating the American electorate through hacking, trolls, bots, and conspiring with the Trump campaign. Russian coordination with Manifort, Gates, and now revealed with Republican operative and lobbyist W. Samuel Patten who just plead guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent, is undeniable. Of course, claims of “witch hunt” will continue as the evidence accumulates.

The Republican House and Senate pimp out Trump’, who cons the status-anxious men of the downwardly Mobil white working and former middle classes, while he plays them all in service to the oligarchs and mobsters of Wall Street and Moscow he admires so.

Triangle of Trumpery

Never mind the narcissism. Never mind the psychopathy/sociopathy. Never mind the sexual predation. Never mind the traitorous personality disorders of the man who demands absolute loyalty from associates whom he routinely throws under the bus. Never mind even his pandering to Putin and his Kremlin-connected oligarch benefactors — neither Manifort nor Cohen can cover for him now. After all, they are really just like him, though without as much brash bluster, bumbling, and lack of impulse control. And, after all, it is he who is doing the bidding of both GOP plutocrats and Russian Oligarchs. Never mind the Republican and Kremlin pimps who own this puppet of power. They are the smooth talking pimps and he is their garish Trollop. Instead, think of the global human consequences of this political tragic comedy.

So, who wins in this insane high-stakes international-casino puppet show?

So far. the American plutocrats, the Russian dictatorship and affiliated oligarch-mob, and the international criminal corporate conspiracy to plunder the planet’s remaining resources before climate chaos, political pandemonium, and societal collapse put an end to it all. That’s who.

But, never mind all that. Just sip your Starbucks mega-latte, read the sports page, and drive off in your SUV, pretending you live in a democracy because you still have all those consumer choices.